6 key factors to consider before upgrading your oral pouch production setup

Before investing in new material handling equipment, it pays to take a step back. A well-timed upgrade can improve ROI through higher uptime, reduced labor intensity, and less waste. But any transition comes with cost and disruption. The decision ultimately comes down to balancing the cost of inaction against the long-term benefits of a more stable and scalable production setup.

The questions below are designed to help you uncover hidden costs and constraints in your current process, and make a well-informed investment decision for sustainable growth.

1. How much of your production time is lost to cleaning and changeovers?

As explained in our article about common downtime causes, inefficient cleaning between flavor changes costs more than you might think. To assess your cleaning-related downtime, ask yourself questions like:

• How many flavor or SKU changes do you perform per week?
• How long does a typical cleaning cycle take?
• Does cleaning require full disassembly of conveyors or elevators?

2. How stable is your material flow?

Moisture variation and fine particle sizes make oral pouch materials highly sensitive to conveying conditions. This means instability in feeding or dosing isn’t just a quality issue, but also a common cause of unplanned downtime.

• How often does your production line stop because of blockages, inconsistent dosing, or overflows?
• Does material behavior vary with humidity or batch differences?
• Are operators required to manually adjust settings during production?

3. How dependent are you on manual handling?

In a small scale production facility, manual processes may be manageable. But as volumes grow, they risk becoming a bottleneck. Assess the labor-intensity of your manufacturing with questions such as:

• How many manual touchpoints exist throughout your production process: from raw material intake to filling and packaging?
• In a typical shift, what’s the percentage of man-hours spent on manually lifting, carrying, or refilling hoppers?
• How often do minor human errors lead to stoppages or discarded product batches? 

4. How quickly can you recover from a disruption?

The cost of unplanned downtime isn’t just about how often stoppages occur. How fast you’re able to return to stable operation is just as important.

• How many moving parts are involved in your conveying setup?
• How long does it normally take to troubleshoot a minor failure?
• How often do your operators need help from external service technicians?
• Do you have reliable partners for spare parts and   spare parts readily available?

5. Is hygiene built into the system, or dependent on procedures?

If your products and facilities are subject to strict HSEQ and food safety requirements, you need to think carefully about how you’re transporting material along your production line. Systems that rely heavily on operator discipline, rather than engineered containment, risk creating both compliance and productivity issues.

• Is your product material transported mainly in open or closed systems?
• Do you experience dust emissions in production areas?
• Can spilled product be safely reintroduced, or does it have to be discarded?

6. Are you planning to scale production within 12 to 24 months?

A fixed-capacity system that supports your needs today can become a growth blocker tomorrow. Depending on your setup, the process of adapting your facilities to accommodate  scale-ups could take anything from a few days up to several months.

• Do you expect significant volume growth?
• Are you looking to expand your SKU portfolio?
• How long can you afford to close down production during a rebuild? 

The material transfer option preferred by industry frontrunners 

After reflecting on the questions above, which material handling option will best support your company’s long-term growth journey? For an increasing number of industry leaders, the answer is a vacuum conveying solution tailored to the needs of oral pouch manufacturing. In contrast to common mechanical methods, vacuum conveying offers benefits such as:

• Enclosed transport, which minimizes harmful dust exposure and contamination risks
• Automated filling that reduces manual processes and human error
• Easy-to-assemble equipment with few moving parts, simplifying cleaning, changeovers, and maintenance
• Modular system design allowing production scaleup without complete rebuilds

For a first-hand account of what this means in practice, don’t miss our interview with Mazlam Orhan, Technical Support specialist at Fiedler & Lundgren. This British American Tobacco-owned Swedish nicotine pouch manufacturer upgraded their production line from screw conveying to vacuum technology as far back as 2006. Discover how this shift has impacted both productivity and workplace safety, while supporting the company’s continuous growth.